Especially for boxing day : a music clip meant to accompany Mike Oldfield's rapid, merry rendition/adaptation of "In Dulci Jubilo". Oldfield's wildly popular instrumental version stormed the hit parades and has since become an integral part of pop Christmas music. In pubs and cafés all over Europe, pleasantly sozzled customers have tried (and failed) to identify each and every instrument, with many a discussion ending in a promise to buy the kids a harspichord tuigar.
"In Dulci Jubilo" (aka In Dulce Jubilo) means "In sweet joy" or "In sweet rejoicing". It is a very old Christmas song with venerable roots which seem to go back all the way to Medieval Germany ; the lyrics, a hymn to the tender newborn babe lying in the manger, are a strange alternation of Latin and Medieval German. It's not immediately clear why anyone would want to write lyrics in two languages at once, but one of my old teachers maintained that this was a typical didactic ploy : if schoolchildren and pupils wanted to know what the text was saying, they needed to tackle the Latin too. But anyway, it's a song of venerable antiquity, which inspired luminaries such as Johann Sebastian Bach.
The clip is still watchable today and Oldfield's version remains a happy celebration of the manifold joys of Christmas.